Items (articles and/or pages) from this title available in Elephind: 4,771

Earliest Date: 18 March 1898

Latest Date: 25 December 1913

Description

The Ellensburg Dawn

Robert A. Turner, a newspaperman from Missouri, moved to Washington for health reasons in 1890. He and his wife, Minnerva, first settled in Seattle, but when he could not secure an adequately affordable space for his paper plant, they moved to Ellensburg in 1891. In November 1893, Turner began publishing a 12-page monthly, the Reformer’s Dawn, to advocate for the People’s Party and the Populist movement which “was sweeping westward with wonderful strength and had just reached Kittitas county in force,” according to Turner in An Illustrated History of Klickitat, Yakima, and Kittitas Counties. The paper quickly achieved popularity, and by August 4, 1894, Turner changed the title to the Dawn. In his editorial for the inaugural issue, Turner stated, “we find we cannot successfully combat the evils that obstruct the reform movement with a monthly, hence have concluded to publish a weekly.”

After only one issue, Turner changed the name to the Weekly Dawn to reinforce and reflect the more frequent publication. The paper was published under this title from August 11, 1894 to January 12, 1895, and then reverted back to the Dawn from January 19, 1895 until March 11, 1898. On March 18, 1898, the newspaper was renamed the Ellensburg Dawn.

By 1900, the thriving town of Ellensburg had several established creameries, stock production ranches (cattle, horses, hogs, and sheep), gold and coal mines, and small-scale mills and was the division headquarters of the Northern Pacific Railway. Because interest in the Populist movement was dwindling, Turner changed the Ellensburg Dawn’s political affiliation to Independent and turned his and the paper’s efforts to promoting the general welfare and economic development of Ellensburg and Kittitas County. By 1906, the Ellensburg Dawn was published on a semiweekly basis.

Turner was appointed postmaster of Ellensburg in 1914 and became extremely busy with the Thrift Stamp and Liberty Bond campaigns as well as with other wartime duties. After 25 years of editing the paper, Turner leased the Ellensburg Dawn to Arthur Slemmons and Jefferson D. Mathews in 1915. It was absorbed by the Ellensburg Democrat, which was published from January 29, 1914 to June 10, 1915, when it was then sold to William Dadler who continued to publish the paper as the Inter-mountain Register until 1917.